ricmax wrote:Well, I don't think a good Idea if a player could use a Machine Gun against a knight (a past-mob). You know, it will throught it's armor and kill it instantly!

Actually, MMORPGs don't really make much sense in that way (reminds me of a game where a mop can deal four times the damage of an axe. And a frozen tuna can deal much more damage than many swords), which, in my opinion, really makes them more fun.

Restricting the weapons and armors you can use at a certain epoch makes sense, but is boring.

By the way, about the time thing: I think we should make it part of the tales. For example, you may have books that take you to the past of a plane, and books that take you to the future of it. IMO we should not make every plane accessible in the past and future. It's as if the future of a plane was a whole new plane.

Any weapons in any epoch.Magical Armor > BulletsWe start to get in trouble if the bullets are Magical too though lol. Bullets could damage like poison or something, because you bleed out over time from the small bullet sized hole(s)?

scrag_10 wrote:Any weapons in any epoch.Magical Armor > BulletsWe start to get in trouble if the bullets are Magical too though lol.

Does it really need to be real up to this point? I mean, of course we're trying to create a game that makes sense, but I don't know if we need to specify the difference between powerful, futuristic weapons and past weapons.

We also could make the futuristic/steampunk tale to be one of the last books you get. At this point, the character is already strong enough to disintegrate any opponent from a feudal tale with any weapon.

scrag_10 wrote:Bullets could damage like poison or something, because you bleed out over time from the small bullet sized hole(s)?

That's a good idea. Bullets can leave the opponents in bleeding state, losing, per second, life equal to 10% of the shot damage, rounded down. In compensation, bullets are weaker than direct attacks or magic.

Is this cumulative? It would be great if it was. The more shots an opponent take, the more he bleeds.

20dmg, loses 2 per second20dmg, loses 4 per second20dmg, loses 6 per second

But wouldn't this make boss battles too easy once it gets to "loses 40 per second"? And bullet attacks would become much more powerful than any other weapon with time.

Maybe we can restrict it to "the opponent will never bleed for more damage than your strongest attack".

scrag_10 wrote:But truth betold, who would want a gun if they could do magic?

Magic is not this powerful in an MMORPG. Or at least not much more than any other weapon.

Consider that, when you're a noob, you can't cast powerful spells, but you can hold a sword (or at least try to).

scrag_10 wrote:Guns could also have greater firing distance, more or less accuracy depending on the gun.

Bleeding would just be like getting poisoned or something, or maybe it makes you slower or something. And enemies would heal themselves too.

In normal games, if you attack with poison over an enemy that's already poisoned, you only deal the normal damage. Poisoning is not cumulative.

However, in real life, if you shoot someone twice, it's gonna die much faster. It's gonna bleed much faster. That's why I think bleeding should be cumulative.

scrag_10 wrote:Also its not like you would have infinite ammo, you would run out eventually, maybe guns could be an expensive weapon to maintain.

I don't like the idea that there is a best job which can only be accessed by players with a lot of money. Mages are like that in a few games, with the rune stuff, and there's nothing worst for a newcomer than not being able to play with the job he/she likes the most.

KaoroSorane wrote:I don't like the idea that there is a best job which can only be accessed by players with a lot of money. Mages are like that in a few games, with the rune stuff, and there's nothing worst for a newcomer than not being able to play with the job he/she likes the most.

In my opinion, we should make them balanced.

Agreed.

It's so boring a MMO that has some advanced job (better than other in some way). Everyone goes to this and make a fuss trying to get a lot of loot and the players who choise be like-taste will surely be MAD about this.

Agreed, but a gun is not a job or a class it is a weapon. There is no reason why a Mage or a Knight or a Sniper, can not all use it. Just like in real life a gun takes little knowledge to use. And depending on how unbalanced it is with other weapons, the price to maintain it can be adjusted.

Maybe you can not even buy it, because they are illegal or something so you have to rely on luck to get a hold of them, that way we don't have to balance anything out, the demand set by the players for ammo, would set the price for them. Just like a real economy.

scrag_10 wrote:Agreed, but a gun is not a job or a class it is a weapon. There is no reason why a Mage or a Knight or a Sniper, can not all use it. Just like in real life a gun takes little knowledge to use. And depending on how unbalanced it is with other weapons, the price to maintain it can be adjusted.

Guns are as hard to use as swords, if you ask me. Anyone can get a sword and try to hit someone with it, and anyone can get a gun and shoot. The real thing is having enough knowledge of battle movements and speed to really fight with a sword, as well as using a gun needs good aim and requires you to deal with the recoil.

scrag_10 wrote:Maybe you can not even buy it, because they are illegal or something so you have to rely on luck to get a hold of them, that way we don't have to balance anything out, the demand set by the players for ammo, would set the price for them. Just like a real economy.

We can't let a liberal approach as of item prices in the game. Who gives the primary offer of an item is us (either by moster drops, quest rewards or shop sales). If an item is miscalculatedly rare, the price will increase too much.

and it level up when the player use themits a bad idea to make all weapons can be used by all charwe could make some basic weapons to be used by all but not ALLabout classes we have A LOT of choicesare you considering the idea of combing classes!?

P.S, the game should be balancedlike for magic we make a delay between two and make the mages have low HP and def as all good games doand melee classes with either good speed or good def and strength or HP

I've written "A Hybrid of Warriors and Mages" back there in the list, but I'd rather not call them Monks. First because it's a clear copy of Final Fantasy. Second because Monks don't really fight at all.

scrag_10 wrote:I agree that weapons types should have there own "levels," but this should also expand to spells.

Take a look at FF2 to see how weapon levels work.

What about this: We make each weapon with a level, and the game skills need some weapon levels as prerequisites.

Oh, and, about the Skill System:In most games, the player simply acquires a set of skills from advancing his job/class rank or gets them by using books. I don't like this system. I've been thinking about this: What if each skill must be learned with a specific NPC through a specific kind of skill training test? You must clear a dungeon using only the skill you're about to learn. If you finish it, you receive it and can use it outside battle.

For example, let's say you're learning a sword skill ( for example, the Amakakeru Ryuu no Hirameki ). For those who haven't heard about it before, it's a fast skill that dashes your character forward while slashing.

So you talk to the Master NPC, and accepts to enter the dungeon.

Once you do, all your equipment is unequiped, in exchange for training clothes that do not grant your character any special bonuses. You're also using a wooden sword or a shinai that won't booster your stats. All your other skills have been blocked, you can only use the Amakakeru.

The dungeon for the Amakakeru is a single map. It could either be a map full of monsters, where you must kill them (and they're only affected by the Amakakeru) or a boss stage (since the Amakakeru is the final skill of the Hiten Mitsurugi, it's pretty apropriate that you train it against your Master).

However, the objective would vary depending on the skill. So, for Teleport, you'd have to go through a dungeon, teleporting through each room and clearing targets. For heal, a lot of monsters would come and start dealing you damage, and your objective is surviving for one minute.

So, what do you think?

Oh, by the way, this also gave me another idea. What if we create Training Schools for each weapon. I know that every character could use a sword, but the style each one uses is pretty different. So, there would be many Kenjutsu (or whatever) schools throughout the planes, from which you learn your skills. Obviously, you could only belong to one of these.

This also applies for Magic Guilds, Ships (for pirates), and all the rest.

Each training school has a set of skills for itself. You still can be trained in all weapons, but you'd specialize in a specific area of each one.

For magic, I get inspiration from Heroes. Maybe each player can start with one ability, such as fire, telekinesis, or super strength. The abilities could enhance attacks, such as setting fire to things when swinging a sword. The player would learn skills for one ability when leveling up.

If the player wishes to learn other abilities, then the character could switch to start specializing in a different ability. The player could only learn skills for one ability at a time, but would keep the skills learned from the former abilities.

This is something that came to mind. I got inspired because I became addicted to playing "My Heroes Ability" on Facebook for a while.

I don't think I quite get what you meant, but if I do, you're saying we should have a set of skills for each weapon, and that you gain new skills by training with that weapon? (Please correct me if I'm wrong)

So, by far, the player could learn skills by either:- Reading a skill book- Advancing the Job Rank- Completing a training with an NPC- Training with the specific weapon

Since we're not really going to add jobs (I guess, right?), three remain for us to choose from.

IMO: If we use the reading-a-skill-book thing, skill books would be over-priced in game, and I'd like to avoid that thing of "best player is the one with money". So we could either gain skills by completing training quests (read my previous post) or by using a certain weapon over and over.

I like the idea of gaining a skill when you complete a Quest.example: Find the Wizards wand for him, you find the wand he teaches you a skill.

I think it would be cool if you didn't get a "predefined" class or job. I think it would be neat if there were just a ton of weapons and a ton of skills/spells/special abilites. But there would be a limit to how many you cold choose, like 10 slots or something. This could insure there would be a greater variety of player types, as in there would be more combinations, adding Uniqueness to each character.

Some skills may take up more then 1 slot, some skills may have a skill tree, some skills could be combined skills making it a super skill!

scrag_10 wrote:I like the idea of gaining a skill when you complete a Quest.example: Find the Wizards wand for him, you find the wand he teaches you a skill.

That's the NPCs' part. The reason why an NPC would teach you a skill could vary. The WAY you learn that skill is the most important point of this, IMO.

scrag_10 wrote:I think it would be cool if you didn't get a "predefined" class or job.

Alright, one more vote to "no-classes". Guess it's settled then.

scrag_10 wrote:I think it would be neat if there were just a ton of weapons and a ton of skills/spells/special abilites. But there would be a limit to how many you cold choose, like 10 slots or something. This could insure there would be a greater variety of player types, as in there would be more combinations, adding Uniqueness to each character.

Limiting the amount of skills you could learn?

Well, considering that your stats will directly influence your damage with each weapon, you can't be excellent with magic and swords at the same time, so this pretty much defines it. Also, most skills will have a requirement. If that requirement is a stat, there's a high chance most mages will never get to learn basic sword skills.

But I think we could allow every player to learn the basic skills of each weapon, but specialize in only one of them, with that training schools thing. Of course, there should be schools for hybrids also, not only "these are warrior dojos and these are magic guilds", but something like "this school teaches the techniques of strong sword attacks, that one teaches powerful charging spells, the one over there teaches skills that enchant swords with magic", etc.

Like any build you can make with a character would get you onto a different strategy. This way, there are no wrong builds. A noob will not have to remake his character just because he messed up his stats before he knew it. (I hate when this happens to me.)

scrag_10 wrote:some skills may have a skill tree, some skills could be combined skills making it a super skill!

I like it. That some skills should be requirements for other skills, that's clear. But the thing of combining two skills into one seems very interesting. Would they be like two requirements for one skill or more like using them in a row to make a combo?

scrag_10 wrote:some skills may have a skill tree, some skills could be combined skills making it a super skill!

I like it. That some skills should be requirements for other skills, that's clear. But the thing of combining two skills into one seems very interesting. Would they be like two requirements for one skill or more like using them in a row to make a combo?

Making skill combos sounds great. XD

Well this could be done a few ways.

1. Multiple Player Combos - One player uses a fire spell, another uses a wind spells, and the wind makes the fire bigger. The wind could also make Arrows move faster, or fire arrows. Perhaps there are different types of arrows too, because fire could burn up the normal arrows nullifying the attack or wind could make arrows move faster increasing the attack power.

2. Single Player Combos - Say you have a Hammer Skill (hammer the weapon), and an Earth skill, each time you attack with the hammer, maybe it creates a shock wave that sends rocks flying. But if you have a Fire Skill maybe it shoots a little fire, or water heals, or Electricity stuns, etc.

This of course can eliminate special elemental weapons, but it could also allow you to combine your Earth Skill and the Water Skill that the hammer has and create something like mud.

So basically any combination of the 4 classical elements + lightning (and others?).

I've been thinking about how to implement that. Remember the system we suggested earlier? Aiming and attacking with the mouse while moving with the ASDW keys?

To attack with the mouse, you only have two options of attacks, by either left or right clicking. The left attack should probably be kept for normal attacks, and the right one would go for skills. Then, if you want to change them in the middle of the battle, you'd press a key on the keyboard for quick access (possibly the keys around ASDF, like Q, E, R, F, C and the numbers).

But skill, for this, we can't really make combos, because you'd have to attack, switch skill, attack again, instead of only using skills in order.

That's when I thought of a nice way for doing that: We could add "macros" to the skill set. Each macro represents a set of three skills in one. This way, you could put a macro on the keyboard that, when pressed, changes the right mouse button skill set.

Of course, you can still set some shortcuts for a single skill, and some skills may be automatically activated by the key if they don't require you to aim, but with this, it becomes much easier to add combos to the game, you merely put the combined skills on a macro.

In the middle of the battle, you press E on the keyboard to switch your alternative attack to the combo, and then when a character on the party dies, you press R to switch that skill into full heal.

By the way, full heal macro should auto-activate, since it doesn't require aim. And I don't think the same character that has Fireball and Multiple Shot also has Revive and Heal, but it was just an example.

the best part about this macro style combos is adds team work into the game, because you could also combine with others. If someone shoots fire, you don't want to put it out with water. 1 player doing this kind of combo attack on his own though, I have no oppinion on it.

This image is how a combo skill tree could work. So the skill combo works like a regular spell. to use combined 1 you need both basic elements. to use combined 2, you need both level 2 spells. This can be used at the same time as the other combo type. Both systems can be used at they same time... They can work together.

Notice how, how I have a water + fire combo. We can discuss later on what kind combinations of elements are possible. I'll start a thread, later. PS, I think I may not have explained things well, but o'well.

Last edited by scrag_10 on Sat Jul 11, 2009 9:07 pm; edited 1 time in total (Reason for editing : image had flaw)

Then, if you wanna learn this skill, you must at least have lv30 and the other two base skills maxed. When you have these, you go to the Northern Mountain Dojo to speak to your master. He would say something like:

"You have advanced quite a bit since the last time you were here. Would you like to learn a new attack skill?"

Once you accept, he'll throw you into a single-room dungeon, where you must kill all the monsters in there with the Triple Slash skill within the time limit (and without dieing, of course). If you succeed, the Triple Slash skill will be permanently added to your skill list, and you may put it on a keyboard shortcut.

So how do you think it should be when you are starting a new character?Perhaps you can pick a master to begin with, and he teaches you the lowest level skill(s), like a tutorial. So it kind of defines a character class type.

I also think a character should be able to learn all skills, but if you decide to pick every skill, all your skills will be horrible low level, but if you only pick 1 skill you might not beable to kill certain enemies easily, even if you are high level.

So a "Mix and Match." And there should be a Dungeon Type, that each of the abilities succeeds in, so noobs can not make a wrong choice, when choosing a skill. And in case you want to redistibute skill points, because your character is horrible, perhaps everytime you level-up you get 1 skill point + plus you can move 1 skill point to another skill. So people don't have to make a new character and can fix the one they have.

scrag_10 wrote:So how do you think it should be when you are starting a new character?Perhaps you can pick a master to begin with, and he teaches you the lowest level skill(s), like a tutorial. So it kind of defines a character class type.

Maybe each school could have some requirements for you to join them, so it's not at character creation, but at later levels. These requirements could have something to do with your stats and the weapons you've been training up to that point, because of that thing of not needing to create a new character because of misdistributing stat points.

This way, there could be a school for [pure-INT], [INT and STR], [pure-STR], [STR and SPD], [pure-SPD], [SPD and INT] and even [All Stat], etc. Respectively, the skills of each one would be [strong magic], [weapon enchanting], [strong battle skills], [quick battle skills], [ninja-like skills], [quick magic] and... maybe [quick weapon enchanting]?

Also, this is only for learning specific skills, we should allow the player to learn the basic skills of each one without needing to enter that school. They are only for advanced training.

scrag_10 wrote:I also think a character should be able to learn all skills, but if you decide to pick every skill, all your skills will be horrible low level, but if you only pick 1 skill you might not beable to kill certain enemies easily, even if you are high level.

The one thing I don't like about this is that it makes some builds better than others. And it also requires you to do research about the best skills to pick. I don't wanna give the player a chance to screw up his character. If we do that, we should give all players all skills, and they train the ones they want.

scrag_10 wrote:So a "Mix and Match." And there should be a Dungeon Type, that each of the abilities succeeds in, so noobs can not make a wrong choice, when choosing a skill. And in case you want to redistibute skill points, because your character is horrible, perhaps everytime you level-up you get 1 skill point + plus you can move 1 skill point to another skill. So people don't have to make a new character and can fix the one they have.

My idea of skill points was that training with a skill improves that skill level, but we can use that too.

We already settled there would be no specific classes in the game, so maybe we should put that thing of training schools aside and work with what you suggested here.

There are still some questions then:

First, how to advance skills: By training with that skill or by leveling up and gaining skill points?Second, how to GAIN skills: Does an NPC gives them to you or do you gain them automatically by training with a weapon?

By the way, do you have a limit of skills you could have, or you just have all of them and you level the ones you want to?

We already settled there would be no specific classes in the game, so maybe we should put that thing of training schools aside and work with what you suggested here.

ok good I missed that.

KaoroSorane wrote:There are still some questions then:

First, how to advance skills: By training with that skill or by leveling up and gaining skill points?

I think by using a type of skill (Sword or Certain element), only that kind of skill will level uplevel up.Example: you use water attack type 1, and 2 alot, both add to your experince with water attacks, when that type (water) levels you get a point to give to either water type 1 or 2.

This could also be done with Weapons. Assuming weapons you can use weapons in different ways. -Hammers breaking stone-Axes cutting treesUpgrading these skills could be used to gain money by doing labor work lol, and ofcourse clearing obsticles

KaoroSorane wrote:Second, how to GAIN skills: Does an NPC gives them to you or do you gain them automatically by training with a weapon?

I think it depends on the skill. Generic fighting skills you get by training with a weapon, but skills like Ninja Arts!!!! Maybe every weapon type could have its own school, and to get in you just have a high enough level for that weapon, and then you get more skills you can upgrade too. I think you'd need a master. Same for all magic.

KaoroSorane wrote:By the way, do you have a limit of skills you could have, or you just have all of them and you level the ones you want to?

Every character should be able to get alll skills.

I think I will make a nice design document up. So I can share my thoughts more accuretly

scrag_10 wrote: I think by using a type of skill (Sword or Certain element), only that kind of skill will level uplevel up.Example: you use water attack type 1, and 2 alot, both add to your experince with water attacks, when that type (water) levels you get a point to give to either water type 1 or 2.

In this case, it's a mix of both. I was thinking that it would make much more sense if the skills you use all the time get stronger, specially because the speed of leveling would grow slower at later levels, and also because of skills like woodcutting or fishing, that do not have a path.

But that's just my opinion of it, I want to hear the others too. Right now, we could have:1) Advancing levels grant you SP that you can use in whichever skill you like.2) Training with a skill on a certain path (like "swords" or "fire") grants you SP that you can use on any one skill of that path3) Training with a skill makes that specific skill stronger.

scrag_10 wrote:This could also be done with Weapons. Assuming weapons you can use weapons in different ways. -Hammers breaking stone-Axes cutting treesUpgrading these skills could be used to gain money by doing labor work lol, and ofcourse clearing obsticles

Not all skills are meant for battle, you know.Ever played games like Runescape or Mabinogi? Aside from the normal battle skills, you have also a set of normal skills for things like smithery or farming.

scrag_10 wrote:

KaoroSorane wrote:Second, how to GAIN skills: Does an NPC gives them to you or do you gain them automatically by training with a weapon?

I think it depends on the skill. Generic fighting skills you get by training with a weapon, but skills like Ninja Arts!!!! Maybe every weapon type could have its own school, and to get in you just have a high enough level for that weapon, and then you get more skills you can upgrade too. I think you'd need a master. Same for all magic.

That's exactly what I was suggesting above there where I talked about the "schools" or "dojos". The only difference is that I suggested that would exist many schools of the same type (ex: many kenjutsu dojos) and each one of them teaches you a different set of skills (ex: one school teaches techniques for defense, the other one for quick attacks, the other one for strong attacks, etc).

Each of those schools have a basic stat requirement for joining them, though, so maybe you can even join more than one, but you also have to train that way too.i.e. if a school for quick attacks requires ( STR=20 and SPD=20 ) and a school for strong attacks requires ( STR=40 ), you'd have to fit both requirements in order to join both schools, and that would need 60 points, which means 50% more levels you have to gain.

scrag_10 wrote:

KaoroSorane wrote:By the way, do you have a limit of skills you could have, or you just have all of them and you level the ones you want to?

Every character should be able to get alll skills.

I think I will make a nice design document up. So I can share my thoughts more accuretly

Yeah, but if we add the school thing, maybe you'd have to decide for a path.